Reproduced from Tribune magazine with thanks.
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When West Midlands police announced that Maccabi Tel Aviv supporters would be banned from their clash with Aston Villa, our establishment immediately decried this as an attack on jews. But as a jew who attends football weekly, I know this is a lie. This is about the British government using jews as a shield — to excuse racism, whitewash violence and criminalise solidarity with Palestine.
Antisemitism is being weaponised: not to protect jewish people, but to protect power. It has become the acceptable face of islamophobia, used to suppress dissent and justify state complicity in genocide.
As a jew, the actions of Israel and the conflation between fascistic fans and Judaism put me in more danger than the people of Aston would. I’ve been to Villa Park many times; I know the community isn’t the problem. “Death to Arabs” was the chant last November, before Maccabi Tel Aviv faced Ajax. Hundreds of their fans poured through the streets of Amsterdam, defacing taxis, ripping down Palestine flags and assaulting locals — all under the watch of Dutch police.
Yet Amsterdam’s mayor ordered the dispersal of a peaceful pro-Palestine protest. Peaceful demonstrators were silenced. Hooligans were given a licence to run riot.
There were headlines about “pogroms”, declaring it the darkest time for Dutch jews since the 1940s, following clashes between supporters and Amsterdammers. The same day, Israeli bombs massacred fifty Palestinians in Gaza, including children at a school in a refugee camp.
I lived in Amsterdam, often attending matches at the Johan Cruyff arena and visited a week before the riots. I drank in local bars, sat amongst home fans, and never felt unsafe due to my religion (because I’m not a racist hooligan).
So, when Aston Villa’s safety advisory group (SAG) and West Midlands police decided that Maccabi Tel Aviv fans would not be allowed in Villa Park, it wasn’t an attack on jews. It was a precautionary act because of racialised violence. Yet to politicians and journalists, the story was one of creating “no-go zones for jews”.
It’s offensive that, in the eyes of my government, my Judaism cannot be compatible with Palestinian emancipation, and that I must choose between them as a football fan.
Kerry Lenihan, a third-generation Villain who runs matchday foodbank collections, grew up visiting family on the Tyburn Road, just a few streets from Villa Park in Aston, a tight-knit, ethnically diverse community in Birmingham.
“There’s already a massive need, not just for food but support across all different areas of poverty,” she explains. “The people who live really close to the ground are the most in need. Those communities have a lot of outreach, and they’re all quite keen to help each other out and share resources.” She backs the decision to ban Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. “Having such a residential area around the ground, literally houses across the road, it makes sense to prioritise safety for all.”
Her words reflect what politicians are pretending isn’t the case. The ban was enforced to protect a community, not to persecute one. A YouGov poll found that 42 percent of surveyed adults approved of banning Maccabi supporters, yet the government, which has a current approval rating of 14 percent, says it is “doing everything” to reverse the decision.
With hate crimes in England rising, record carbon emissions and 172,000 children in temporary accommodation, I’d feel safer as a jew if these were the priorities of the government, not Israeli supporters. Why should residents welcome a fanbase that sings about “Arab whores”, hanging communists and raping girls?
On Friday, after failing to block an appeal against proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist group, the Government tried to lift the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans. Selective authoritarian censorship only fuels Gaza’s genocide.
Politicians who supported proscription, including the prime minister, called the Tel Aviv decision “antisemitic” and creating “no-go zones for jews”. Yet over the weekend, Maccabi’s derby fixture against Hapoel was cancelled after riots — does that mean the Israeli police are antisemitic and that Tel Aviv is now a no-go zone for jews?
Politicians who’ve spent years fanning religious tension and ignoring football fans now claim to care about the right of Tel Aviv fans to attend. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. They remained silent when West Ham fans were banned in Europe and when England was forced behind closed doors. But now an Israeli team faces consequences for racist behaviour, the government speaks up for fans.
I’ve spent enough time in police kettles with both Ipswich and England to know this isn’t because they care about supporters but see an opportunity to libel an entire community as a danger to jews. Antisemitism has again been used as a cover: one that dehumanises muslims, isolates jews and protects a genocidal state.
The press, too, plays its part. A report in July found that the BBC gave Israeli deaths thirty-three times more coverage per fatality than Palestinian ones in the year after 7 October, despite there being thirty-four times more Palestinian deaths. That’s not journalism, it’s propaganda.
And when Sky News platforms a non-jew who called the genocide a “hoax” and encouraged the murder of Palestinian journalists — uncritically as the voice of jewish Aston Villa fans — it isn’t just distortion, it’s complicity.
In good conscience as a jewish football fan, I can’t leave my religion to be co-opted and bastardised by those who wish to commit genocide and spread hatred in its name. Football has always been politicised, but its politics are being hijacked. With Tommy Robinson flaunting a Maccabi shirt in Israel and stickers of Nigel Farage plastering stadium bogs, the far right has seized a space the left has been too slow to enter.
But things are changing. Fan-led movements like A City United 4 Gaza and Youth Front for Palestine are reconnecting football to the struggle for justice. I’ve met Blackburn fans educating fellow supporters on Gaza, Ipswich fans raising over £20,000 for food banks, and Manchester City supporters boycotting over ticket prices. Real safety comes from that solidarity, and as a jew, I never feel unwelcome or in danger from existing in that space.
Maccabi Tel Aviv announced on Monday that they’d refuse tickets from Villa, following Tommy Robinson’s claim he would attend the game — he was previously banned from football after punching another England fan in 2019.
If the government continues pushing for hooligans to run amok on our streets, I don’t feel they’re defending me. They’re using me. It doesn’t help me attend football; it sanitises war crimes done in my name. When the media misrepresents the ban, they’re not protecting jews; they’re manufacturing consent to scare them.
And whilst they argue over who gets into the stadium, Palestine’s footballers never will. At least 421 footballers have been killed in Gaza since 7 October. This is not a debate about who should be allowed into stadiums; it’s about those who cannot.
